


All night in the company of ghosts

by robokittens



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha kids - Freeform, F/M, Multi, Sadstuck, Underage Drinking, gay musketeers, homos behaving heterosexually, jossed beyond repair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robokittens/pseuds/robokittens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She pulled two fresh glasses from her sylladex and, balancing them in one hand, filled them. She handed one to Strider, and raised the other in a toast.</p><p>"To gay old times."</p><p>"To gay old times," he echoed, and clinked his glass against hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All night in the company of ghosts

>   
> TT: Your spring break is coming up, am I correct?  
> TG: youre always coret  
> TG: *correct  
> TG: is something foing on  
> TG: something i should know abnout  
> TG: *going *about *is there adventure afoot  
> TT: Send me the dates. I have frequent flier miles, and I fear their expiry approaches.  
> TG: oh tt youre the bset.  
> TG: *the bset  
> TG: thje very greatst.  
> TG: fuck.  
> 

  
;

"Welcome to _la chateau Lalonde_ ," she said, gesturing extravagantly, if vaguely. "Make yourself at home. As long as your idea of home involves sterility, solitude, and a lot of alcohol."

"Two out of three ain't bad." He laughed. "Your French is atrocious."

"Your face is atrocious."

"Your comebacks are better online."

"Your face is better onl— shut the fuck up, Strider."

She smacked the back of his head, and he dropped his suitcase to the floor; the shock of the wheels on the marble echoed down the hall. In an instant he had her pinned to the wall, a slim blade pressed to her throat.

She smiled. "That's a stabbing weapon, not a slicing one. Can't fool me, DS." She laughed, and the movement forced the blade harder (bluntly) against her throat. She said it again, sing-song: "Can't fool me!"

"Not if I tried," he agreed, sliding the weapon back into his sylladex. "You're simply the best there is."

"It's true," she said, and grabbed the handle of his suitcase, hefting it off the floor with a soft _oof_ and a wince. "Mother, I'm afraid, is away, or she'd be here to welcome you. Would you like the guest room, the other guest room, the other other guest room — well, you don't want that one; it's covered in wizards — or do you just want to stay in my room? We can have a slumber party! Don't worry, I've got a king bed; you won't catch girl cooties."

"Thank goodness. Cooties would absolutely devastate my vacation."

"Slumber party it is, then? Right this way, Mr Strider."

He hadn't noticed she was wearing heels until he heard them clicking down the long hallway ahead of him.

;

Roxy's room was decorated in shades of pink and grey, with a prevailing motif of cats and wizards; it had the distinct look of a room that's been lived in since childhood, occasionally updated but mostly left alone.

The comforter on her invitingly large bed was a sort of dusky rose, and curled up in the middle of it was a large black cat. The cat opened an eye — one of four — when they walked in, and made an odd sort of trilling sound. Ro plopped down and skritched behind the cat's ears, and the trill changed to a purr.

"This is Friskers von Whiskers. He's an ectobiological mistake," she said fondly.

"It's very nice to meet you, von Whiskers," Strider said solemnly, sitting gingerly down on the edge of Ro's bed.

"Please, call him Frisky." At that, Roxy suddenly jumped up, causing Strider to fall back somewhat onto the bed. "I'm so sorry, dear DS; in all the excitement over you being here, I've forgotten my manners. Can I get you a drink?"

He laughed, and scratched the cat under the chin. "I thought you'd never ask. But then I realized I knew you better than that. I'll have whatever you're having."

"Excellent!" She knelt down at the foot of her bed, and he realized that what he'd mistaken for a footboard, perhaps a bookcase, was in fact an incredibly well-stocked minibar.

"Your room is also covered in wizards," he pointed out as she busied herself with mixology. "Is the guest room so much worse?"

She looked up for just long enough to give him a scathing look. "These are _my_ wizards," she said, in a tone that clearly indicated the difference ought to be obvious.

"Ah yes," Strider said. "Of course. My mistake."

The four-eyed cat climbed onto his lap and settled there, purring loudly.

;

“Do you always keep it so dark in here?”

“I like the ambiance. Do you always wear those fucking sunglasses inside? I know about your freakish albinoness; you don’t have to hide.”

“Albinism. And I don’t have it; the gene markers are missing. The eyes are totally idiopathic — although genetic.”

“Your brother’s a freak, too?”

“You’re a charmer, Lalonde, you know that?”

“I can kick you out into the cold New York night; be nice. What’s ‘an esoteric process of genetic reamalgamation’ anyway?”

“Well, I figure there are two options: one, my dear brother is in fact my genetic _father_ , and my genetic mother absconded to the far reaches, leaving my dear infant self to be raised by my father-cum-brother alone, who has for some reason chosen to rear me as though our relationship were fraternal rather than paternal. Perhaps because it reflects better on him to be raising an orphaned sibling than a child out of wedlock? I still haven’t determined.”

“What’s the other possibility?”

Strider held out his glass, and Ro topped him off obligingly.

“He got knocked up by aliens.”

Ro paused for a moment, tilting her head to stare at him. “Seems reasonable.” She knocked back the rest of her drink.

;

"I see things through them," Roxy blurted, suddenly enough that Strider nearly spilled his drink. "Through the windows. That's why I keep the shades drawn."

He stared at her.

"They're _windows_ , Ro. You're supposed to see through them."

She glared at him, lips a thin line of what bright red lipstick wasn't smeared on the rim of her glass. "I see the _future_ , jackass. Or— into the past. Or alternate realities, or something. I _see things_ , Strider; things that aren't supposed to be outside my window. Things that _aren't there_.

"But they're real. Or they were real, or they will be, or _should_ be, or..." She sighed. "Mother tried to teach me how to interpret it, but she's so full of _shit_. I never know if she knows what she's talking about, or if she's just _making things up_ , or...

"Fuck," she muttered darkly. "Or if _I'm_ just making things up. Jane doesn't believe me about any of it, you know."

"Hey," Dirk said, voice as tender as he could manage, "I believe—"

Roxy pitched her glass across the room with enough force to stun him into silence. It broke silently against the heavy curtains covering the window, and the pieces fell silently to the floor.

"Ro," he said quietly, uncertainly; it was almost a question.

Roxy threw herself across the bed, landing on what Strider could only assume was meant to be a doll of some sort. It was amazing that he hadn't noticed it before; almost the size of Ro herself, it was clad in purple robes and wizard hat, and its knit features, while not entirely menacing, were decidedly fluthloid. The force of Ro's attack propelled one of its long, tentacular arms into the air, only to settle down on her back in a simulacrum of tenderness.

"She's never going to love me, is she?" Ro's voice emerged from its knitted depths.

"What _is_ that?" Strider was unable to keep the horror, or fascination, from his voice.

Ro sighed deeply, and the tentacle on her back heaved with it. "It's an Eldritch Princess, it was a gift from my mother, and _you can't distract me from my misery_. It's already past dark on that foreign coast and that accursed chat program hasn't beeped _once_. She's _forgotten me_ , Dirk."

"She hasn't forgotten you. Indeed, she probably assumes you're too blotto by this point — that _we_ are, in fact; she knows I'm here, doesn't she? She's only being polite. You know our Janey."

Ro squirmed in the doll's tentacular grasp until she was facing Strider again, and even through his glasses and the dark, he could just about see tears beginning to glisten in her eyes.

"Yes, _our_ Janey," she said darkly. "You could probably make her yours, if you wanted."

"You know I don't, Ro." The note of levity in his voice was so false that Ro could almost taste it: bitter, like burnt coffee. "You know I don't — don't like Jane. Like that. Although maybe I'd have a chance! At least she's into people with actual _human skin tones_." He paused. "Fuck."

"English?"

"Motherfucker, do you speak it?" Strider quipped, and leaned over the side of the bed. "Where'd you put that gin?"

"Don't play coy with me, young man." Ro sat up suddenly, and pulled Strider back up to face her. She reached out and rested a hand against his cheek, waiting to see if he would react before moving it again, but he stayed still. After a moment, she moved her hand to tap questioningly on the frame of his sunglasses.

He swallowed hard.

"You can't possibly need to see my _eyes_. Don't tell me I've achieved subtlety tier."

Ro laughed at that, finally; it was genuine and bright in the darkness. "Never that, DS; never that. Everyone knows. I just — I just want to see what you _look like_."

"Get me another drink, and we'll see." He pulled away finally. "And if he knows... well, he's staying quiet."

"He's a fool, DS. A damn fool. Any boy would be lucky to have you."

Strider sighed. "A drink, Ro, please. I implore you."

"Implore away, old chum," she said, and produced the half-empty bottle of gin as if by magic. Strider raised an eyebrow, a black arch over the point of his glasses.

"What?" she asked innocently. "Liquorkind. What else would you expect?" As if to prove it, she pulled two fresh glasses from her sylladex and, balancing them in one hand, filled them. She handed one to Strider, and raised the other in a toast.

"To gay old times."

"To gay old times," he echoed, and clinked his glass against hers. "You sick woman."

"You love it," she said, and leaned forward to tap her glass against the rim of his sunglasses.

;

"We're not destined for anythin'," she mumbled, curling up tighter in his lap. "We were s'posed to be; we were s'posed to be somethin' grand. But somethin' went wrong in the — in the universe. In the _universe_ ," she said again, for emphasis.

Her chin was digging into his knee, and he stroked his fingers across her hair, calloused fingertips barely skittering across the gold strands that curled over her ears.

"You're grand, Roxy," he said, and she made a noise that was almost but not quite a laugh, a soft little "ttch" as she turned her head and buried her face in his thigh.

"You're a liar."

Her voice was muffled by his jeans, and he felt unbearably hot all of a sudden, like the damp pant of her breath through the denim had suffused throughout his entire body. His fingers twisted in her hair, as gently as he could manage. He didn't want to hurt her, not at all, especially not when she was like this.

“Heroes,” she said. “We were gonna be _heroes_. We were gonna — gonna save the universe. And now they’re gonna _come here_ and they’re gonna _fuck it all up_. They don’t even _belong here_ , Dirk. Dirk, they don’t _belong here_!” She sat up suddenly, gripping the front of his shirt so tightly he thought it might tear, clenched in both her fists.

He put his hands on her shoulders, trying to steady her. “Who?” he asked, unsure if he should; talking about it might just upset her more.

“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “Us? Our parents? I’m not s'posed — I’m not s'posed t' _see_. That’s not my _JOB_ —” Her fists tightened on his t-shirt, and she slumped forward, pressing her face against his chest. “I’m not s'posed to _see_ ,” she said again.

He took a deep, shaky breath, felt her shudder with him. “I dream about you,” he said abruptly, “all the time. Fuck. Not— I mean. You’re in my dreams. I have these dreams, and they seem so _real_ , and I’m always trying to find you—”

“Fuck you,” she whispered into his shirt, “fuck _you_ , I’m right here,” and when she looked up at him with tearful eyes, let go of his shirt with one hand to pull off his sunglasses, he let her.

He smoothed her hair back, pushing her bangs out of her eyes, and tried not to blink.

“I love her, you know,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, and he was surprised to find he was whispering as well.

“She doesn’t believe me,” she said, and put a hand on his face, framing one eye where his glasses had been. “But you believe me, don’t you?”

He nodded, swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he whispered, and leaned down to kiss her.

Her lips trembled against his, and her grip on his shirt loosened, tightened, loosened again. He hadn't thought, particularly, about kissing Roxy before — _tried_ not to think about kissing any of them — but it had never occurred to him she might be hesitant.

"You ok, Ro?" he asked, and when he breathed against her ear she shuddered.

She laughed again, that angry laugh, high and bright and bitter. "I'm not him," she said. "You're not her. We're not all right, neither of us. And don't —"

His eyes widened.

"Don't you dare tell me you love me."

She put both hands on his face and pulled him in, kissing him hungrily, bruisingly.

"I won't," he promised, and bit her lip, pressed tiny, breathy kisses to her jawline, put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down onto the bed. "I won't."

**Author's Note:**

> i know there are a few non-canon details (roxy's cat, most obviously), but i realized and went "eh, fuckit" about most of them. i do what i want.
> 
> also, this was conceptualized and 98% written before hussie went and made it fucking heartbreaking with this:
> 
> TT: How is it a thing?  
> TG: its a thing beaucase if it wasnt a thing then u wouldnt be all like...........  
> TT: All like what?  
> TG: well wantin nothing to do w me 4 starties  
> TT: Don't be ridiculous.  
> TT: I have more to do with you than any dude could possibly bargain for.  
> TT: And I like it just fine.  
> TG: what a totatly lame + sweet answer simultaneouslay  
> TG: <3  
> TT: Yeah.
> 
>  
> 
> title from the mountain goats, because everything is the mountain goats: http://www.themountaingoats.net/lyrics/getlonely_lyr.html#goldsboro
> 
> and thx to minna <z3 good friend best coolk1d


End file.
